The MAIA Blog

The Martial Arts Industry Association exists to help grow martial arts participation by helping school owners succeed. Many school owners are never exposed to the foundational business concepts necessary to run and grow a successful business. At MAIA, we can help fill that need, as we are made up of school owners who have walked in your shoes, know your struggles, and can help with strategies to elevate you from novice to a "blackbelt in business".

When I was a kid, I watched the Superman show on TV. Many of you younger folks may ask, “What TV show?” A few of you might also have fond memories of watching. The narrator’s dramatic introduction to that show was: “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look! Up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superman!” The bottom line is, none of us, nor our students, are Superman. We are mortal. Bullets kill mortals. When I was a white belt, my first instructor, Sensei Mike Smith, taught me that gun defense was all about getting the person with the gun to go away. I was taught to give him every material thing he asked for. The only time I was to attempt to disarm him was if he were trying to get me or a loved one into a car. My mindset had to be: “I’m already dead. Let’s see if this can be a more pleasant death than it will be if I get in that...